home from the bloody Fields of Battel the same fortunate Trophies of our Victory namely more Taxes than any Nation under the Heavens and all the Religions of the World besides And so in the second place I come to shew That God has been pleased in a most wonderful manner to restore unto us of these ravaged Nations together with our King our Liberty and Property our Religion and Freedom of Conscience in the highest degree of Perfection Our Fathers like the plagued Egyptians described in the Book of Wisdom were shut up in Wisd 17. 2. their own Houses and confined by their usurping Governors from maintaining the sweetest comfort of Humane Life Society with their Friends being made Prisoners of Darkness fettered with the Bonds of a long Night Whilst they could be permitted See the Act Anno 1649. Chap. 72. on the Week-day to travel but little further than the Jewish Sabbath days Journey But now praised be God the day is broke and those black affrighting shadows are fled away The most illustrious day now shines upon us our Calendars ever yet recorded A Day at first graced by the sacred light of a Noon-tide Star added to that of the Sun A Day which the Lord himself has made marvellous in our eyes for the most auspicious Birth and Return of his Gracious Majesty the Breath of our Nostrils the Anointed of the Lord. A Lam. 4. 20. Day that next to the Nativity of our blessed Saviour ought in all Ages to be solemnized with the most gratefull Doxologies of Glory to God in the highest for so miraculously sending Peace on this our share of the Earth and so graciously shewing his good Will towards us a lost ruined part of Mankind For so mercifully compassing us about with Songs of Deliverance For so compassionately vouchsafing us a second inferior sort of Redemption from our temporal and spiritual Thraldom a second lower kind of Restauration unto all our forfeited through Sin humane and divine happiness For how does Judgment now run down as Waters Amos 5. 24. and Righteousness as a mighty Stream Pure and undisturbed as that flowing River which gushed forth from the twice smitten Rock opened by the divine hand of Moses Num. 20. 11. Now the sincere and upright Judges of our Land impartially render to all their dues to Caesar the things that are Caesar's with an undaunted Loyalty to God and his Holy Church the things that are God's with pure Religion to all the King's Subjects the things that belong to them with an even indifferency We now again walk in the House of God as Friends which not long since had been made a graceless Den of Thieves whilst it was defiled with Horses and polluted with those far uncleaner Beasts their Riders who plainly and without a Metaphor made the Church of Christ here on earth to be truly Militant and terrible as an Army Cant. 6. 4. with Banners forgetting that meekness of Wisdom which guided our first Reformers in setling that pure peaceable Protestant Religion which this day happily has restored to us In our Cathedral Service whether in the Body or out of the Body we cannot tell being caught up 2 Cor. 12. 2. as it were with S. Paul to the third Heaven we now joyn with those ten thousand times ten thousand Rev. 5. 11 13. and thousands of thousands of Angelical ministring Spirits in a full Chorus to sing Psalms and Hymns of Blessing and Honour and Glory and Power unto him that sitteth upon the Throne and unto the Lamb for ever and ever But to advance yet farther to that most holy ground where the Communion Table is by publick Authority most properly placed and here no Protestant Spectator unless falsly so called but but must from the bottom of his heart acknowledge that we alone give unto the Lord the Glory Psal 29. 2. due unto his Name and worship the Lord in the right beauty of Holiness Whilst we alike decline the Whorish Gawdry of Babylon the Idolatrous Pageantry of the Church of Rome on the one hand and the slovenly clownish and in truth irreverent behaviour of the Phanatick Dissenters on the other We enjoy the most absolute form of the Hierarchy to be found upon earth a Monarchical Government of Bishops in our Church where our lawful Soveraign the only true Vicegerent of Jesus Christ that supreme Bishop of our Souls presides over us in all sacred spiritual matters And by the gracious encouragement of this our King the Churches Royal nursing Father it comes to pass that many of those who serve at her Altars are the Sons of Nobles most of them at least descended from reputable Parentage We have publick set Forms of Prayer to the end that neither Priest nor People should be rash with their mouths or let their hearts be hasty to utter any unpremeditated thing before God The modest Compilers of our Liturgy having minded us that God is in Heaven and Omniscient vain Man upon Earth and born ignorant of the ways of the Lord and unskilful in the word of Righteousness and therefore prudently direct us to let our words be few and chosen It is our Church alone which holds no pious Frauds maintains no holy Cheats It is she alone that can defie all the studied wit and malice of her Adversaries to shew any political Article or Canon of her Establishment whereby it may be proved that any of her true Sons can cry out with Demetrius and say Sirs ye know that by Act. 19. 25 28. this craft we have our Wealth therefore Great is Diana of the Ephesians No it is only her Teachers when they instruct their respective Congregations who cannot be persuaded to suppose that Gain is Godliness but with an ardent Zeal demonstrate that they seek not theirs but them that they covet not their Possessions but their Salvation She obliges her Proselites to stand to no Principles but those which in express words are manifest in the Scriptures or else by undeniable consequence may be deduced thence The unfained meaning of which Texts she most candidly refers to those impartial Commentators those greatest Lovers and most competent Judges of the Divine Truth namely the uncorrupted Councils and genuine Works of those ancient Fathers who came nearest our Blessed Saviour the first Author and last Finisher of our Faith as well in Holiness as time She most indulgently and like a true Mother obliges her Children to the performance of no Duty which has not the power of God's Law in the first place and of the King's Law in the second a Divine as well as Humane Sanction to enforce the practice thereof Her Discipline in short is most sincerely Primitive and her Doctrine most truly Apostolical 'T is she alone that compleatly answers the description made in the Canticles of the Spouse of Christ She is all fair there is no spot in her Cant. 4. 7. Thus hath God been pleased to look upon his
A SERMON Preached in the Cathedral Church OF ROCHESTER On the 29 th of May 1684. BEING The Anniversary of His Most Sacred Majesty's Birth and happy Restauration to these his undoubted Realms and Dominions By JOHN CLERKE Late Fellow of All-Souls College and Proctor of the University of Oxford Now Rector of Ulcomb and Haristsham in the County of Kent Published at the Request of that Corporation Caesaris alma dies Longa precor Pylioque veni numerosior aevo Semper hoc vultu vel meliore nite Mart. Lib. 4. Ep. 1. LONDON Printed for George Downes at the Three Flower de Lyss's over against St. Dunstan's Church in Fleet-street 1684. To the Right Worshipful the MAYOR RECORDER ALDERMEN and COMMON COUNCIL of the City of ROCHESTER Worthy Sirs FIrst in your Cathedral Church to have recommended and afterwards in a more solemn manner to have dedicated a Persuasive to a chearful Obedience to those lawful Governors whom God alone has thought fit to place over you of that so Ancient and truly Loyal City may seem upon a transient View to argue the Preacher and Publisher of such a Discourse to have been so far transported by a too fervent Zeal for the defence of his most just Cause as to have overlooked his LORD and MASTER'S Observation namely that They Mar. 2. 17. that are whole have no need of the Physitian but they that are sick And therefore a brief Treatise on such a Point as this had been much more properly delivered in the Pulpit much more seasonably presented from the Press to some other Corporation which has peradventure of late been afraid to do that which is Evil against their Supreme Magistrate only because they have happily found him not to have borne the Sword of Justice in vain But since that Remark of our Blessed Saviour does in no wise dehort from following the Son of Sirach's wholsome Advice viz. to use Ecclus 18. 19. Physick or ever we be sick to meet even the remotest Symptomes of those more slowly approaching Diseases which tend to the dissolution of those earthly Houses our Souls at present inhabit Let therefore what hath been said upon this Subject be interpreted according to the true meaning thereof i. e. Not so much for a Confirmation as a happy Continuation but chiefly for a deserved Commendation of your firm unshaken Allegiance to the Crown and of your Exemplary Obedience to the Church as now by Law established And that too at such a time when so many of your Sister-Societies did but too plainly demonstrate That the true Faith they ought then to have born to their Soveraign his lawful Heirs and Successors was only supported by the easily yielding Ground and built upon that most deceitful Sandy Foundation of a mistaken Interest Wherefore may the design of this Essay be understood to be what really it is a sincere hearty though weak Endeavour That You who now stand so secure may take heed lest hereafter you fall That You who are now planted a noble Vine Jer. 2. 21. wholly a right Seed may not in time to come be turned into the degenerate Plant of a strange Vine So prayeth Your Servant for Jesus sake John Clerke 1 Cor. 10. 10. Neither murmur ye as some of them also murmured and were destroyed of the destroyer THis Chapter contains a Catalogue of those numerous transgressions which the Children of Israel were found guilty of before the Lord their God In which account my Text brings in that Cardinal Sin of murmuring against their Rulers of repining against Gods heavenly Dispensations in governing all the Nations upon Earth according to his Divine Will and Pleasure For the Words have a particular reference to Korah and his rebellious Accomplices who insolently accused the man Moses a Person of eminent meekness even above all the men which were upon Num. 12. 3. the face of the Earth for haughtily aspiring to make himself altogether a Prince over them in Num. 16. 13. Temporal matters and for constituting his Brother Aaron High Priest and so consequently making him Chief in all Spiritual affairs Whereupon the disaffected Party gather themselves together in Tumults and tell these two Pillars Upholders of the most immediate Theocracy Josephus lib. contr Appion ever known on this side Heaven plainly to their faces That in truth they took too much upon them seeing all the Congregation were holy every one Num. 16. 3. of them and the Lord was alike among them Whence they proceeded to demand that uncivil question Wherefore then did these two Brethren arrogantly lift up themselves above the Congregation of the Lord Thus do we find that in all Ages before and from the Jewish times even down to our own later unhappy dayes of utter confusion and ineffable misery the Trumpet never yet sounded an Alarm for battle but the goodly pretences the specious pleas made use of to excite the unthinking Multitude to animate the ignorant Rabble which like those sixscore thousand persons of Nineveh cannot discern between their right Jonas 4. 12. hand and their left evermore were and evermore will be those false suggestions that their Rulers take away from them their Property and Liberty their Religion and freedom of Conscience Wherefore since the blessed Apostle tells us in the following words of my Text That all these things hapned unto them for ensamples and Ver. 11. they were further written and delivered down unto posterity for our admonition upon whom the ends of the world are come whose lot it is as persons born out of due time to wear out a troublesome life in these last and worst of dayes Let us I say therefore endeavour to grow wise upon other persons cost Let us having taken a serious view in private of those stupendous Judgments shew'd upon those Mutineers how suddenly those malecontents perished and came to a fearful end unanimously resolve Rebellion to 1 Sam. 15. 23. be in truth according to the Scripture comparison made thereof as the sin of Witchcraft Let us accost those Sons of men who in the phrase of the Psalmist are set on fire that resolvedly Psal 57. 4. continue restless as those noxious aspiring flames which first incensed them until they have like those consumed whatsoever is high and great above them that most obstinately persevere by their daily practices and nightly Studies to cause unhappy divisions amongst us in the words St. Paul does his foolish Galatians Gal. 3. 1. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 namely who hath bewitched you Who by the Hellish power of magick Fascination has so far infatuated you so strangely depriv'd you of that natural reason you were born into the World with as to make you so erroneously prefer Changes and War before Establishment and Peace In the ensuing Discourse I shall endeavour to shew 1. That in these later times of Usurpation Liberty and Property Religion and Freedom of Conscience were most unjustly taken away from the
oppressed Inhabitants of these three then wretched Kingdoms 2. That God has been pleased in a most wonderful manner to restore unto us of these ravaged Nations together with our King our Liberty and Property our Religion and Freedom of Conscience in the highest degree of perfection 3. That notwithstanding this an ungrateful murmuring against the Government is still the English as it was then the Israelitish Sin which cries aloud to Heaven for Vengeance And then 4. And Lastly I shall draw a practical Conclusion from the foregoing matter and so dismiss you Of these in their order and First That in these later times of Usurpation Liberty and Property Religion and Freedom of Conscience were most unjustly taken away from the oppressed Inhabitants of these three then wretched Kingdoms It cannot indeed be denied by any ingenuous person but that contrary to the Roman Observation Silent Leges inter arma Cic. Orat. pro Milone at the same time when the shriller sound of the Trumpet the noise of Horses and the noise of a great Host pierced our Fathers tender ears Justice however was heard to utter her still small voice in our Streets whilst in the words of the Psalmist the Throne of Iniquity which then bore Psal 94. 20. the Soveraign Sway framed all their Mischief by a Law For whosoever shall compare the Tryal of our Blessed Saviour Jesus Christ before Pontius Pilate's first High Court of Justice with the Arraignment of our late most barbarously murdered King before John Bradshaw's second shall find them to differ no more than a faithful Copy from its Original The blind rage of the Populace the insufferable insolence of the Soldiery the mock-shew of Equity but especially the notorious Corruption of both their Judges in condemning two innocent Persons in whom they could find no fault in suffering them alike to be destroyed only by a pretended Law nay and by a further abetting their Deaths by an unknown Law do make their conditions exactly parallel and I had almost said alike in Sufferings alike in Innocence But to proceed As it fared with Him who sate upon the Throne even so did it fare with him Ecclus 40. 3 5. that was humbled in Earth and Ashes Wrath and Envy Trouble and Vnquietness fear of Death and Anger and Strife were made the common portion of Truth and Fidelity Whilst those partial Determiners of Causes to use the Prophets words smote the great Houses with Breaches and the little Amos 6. 11. Houses with Clefts The Princes and People the Potentates and Peasants in proportion to their respective Estates were equally damnified and oppressed Then was the time when the Loyal Party having a matter against another durst not go to Law 1 Cor. 6. 1 7. before the Vnjust Then was the Apostle's Injunction easily observed by all good men rather to take wrong rather to suffer themselves to be defrauded by their false Brethren who were for them or their traiterous Enemies who were openly against them than to bring in their legal Defence and implead them before those Heathen Tribunals Then in Short was Judgment turned into Wormwood then did they leave off righteousness in the Earth Whilst they exercised the most tyrannical high arbitrary Government over the Lives Liberties and Properties of the English Scotch and Irish Nations ever yet read or heard of amongst us Whilst Volumes will not contain the Murders Rapines Oppressions Sequestrations Decimations Imprisonments and whatsoever else can be thought of that was cruel unjust and as that great Apostle of those more modern Gentiles words it might be taken for an effect of their power Hobbs Leviat p. 56. or a cause of their pleasure But to leave this Humane Court and to enter into that Divine one the Church Where behold in our Cathedrals those places of God's standing Worship where we used to be most religiously delighted with the grateful melody and harmonious noise of Praises and Thanksgivings unto God the Fountain and Foundation of all our Bliss We then instead thereof most wretchedly heard the contrary baleful Notes the ill-boding voices of those melancholy Birds mentioned by the Prophet Isaiah The Cormorant Isa 34. 11. and the Bittern which possess'd those Places the Owl also and the Raven which alone dwelt in them Those that lifted up the Axes before upon the Psal 74. 5 6. thick Trees the Psalmist tells us were renowned as such who intended to bring a thing to an holy perfection but lo then they brake down all the carved work of the Sanctuary with Axes and Hammers It pitied us to see the Stones of our ruined Sion lying in the dust it grieved us indeed to behold this Abomination of Desolation standing where it ought not It afflicted us to view in the words of Hosea the Thorn and the Thistle coming up flourishing Hos 10. 8. and full blown upon our Altars where the Mystical Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ were usually beheld and received with a most awful Reverence If then our Emanuel our God with us had vouchsafed to have bowed the Heavens to have come down and visited that stubborn stiff-necked Generation of men which so often in their hypocritical bablings invoked him by the name of Lord Lord He would have found a much like but more unhallowed Reception upon such a second Advent than he did upon his first For those Enemies of his Cross made even his Father's House become a lively Representation of that crowded Inn where there was no room where he suffered himself at his Incarnation to be necessitated to make a Stable his consecrated Temple and a Manger his Holy of Holies wherein to lodge his shrowded Divinity They most sacrilegiously made those Church-Lands dedicated unto God for the maintenance of a religious and learned Clergy to become the Wages of their Iniquity They were then guilty of Jeroboam's evil way they made the lowest of the 1 King 13. 33. People Priests of the High Places whereupon it naturally followed that their Priest taught for Hire Mic. 3. 11. and their Prophets divined for Money From thence we had preached up unto us for sound and as the Cant then was Soul-saving Doctrine blasphemous Socinianism wild Enthusiasm disguised Popery which gave execrable Indulgences and Absolutions to men not to perform their Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy they had so often taken by virtue whereof as good Christians and Subjects they and their Posterity were obliged to bear true Faith and Trust to their lawful Soveraign and so far as in them lay to defend that Protestant Church and Faith of which our Royal Martyr died Head and most true Defender Wherefore I shall chuse to conclude this first Proposition with the Remark of a Person worthily honoured for his eminent Loyalty and Learning We like the revolting Subjects of Spain Sir Robert Filmer fought against our Liege Lord for Taxes and Religion and proved alike prosperous Rebels whilst we as they brought